


Some Kind Of Home

by WonderTwinC



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, mockingjay au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-31
Updated: 2012-03-31
Packaged: 2017-11-02 19:09:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/372348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WonderTwinC/pseuds/WonderTwinC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s hard enough to walk a line in pieces, but you don't have to do this on your own. [AU ending to Mockingjay. In which Haymitch doesn't immediately come back to District 12 with Katniss.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Kind Of Home

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first attempt at writing for this fandom so I am horribly sorry that if it's a little out of character.

She comes back alone.

The house is huge and empty without her mother, without _Prim_ , and she barely manages the first week without losing herself to something she can’t even name. Her only visitor is Greasy Sae and they never speak.

Katniss doesn’t really mind.

The only real annoyance in her life is the phone that rings and rings without stop. If it isn’t the head doctor then it’s Effie or Plutarch and she doesn’t wish to talk to any of them. On occasion her mother calls, but she isn’t ready to face her either.

It isn’t until almost three weeks of being there in the empty house that she finally gets a call worth having. Greasy Sae has answered the phone and when she yells that it’s _him_ she is out of her room and down the stairs so fast that she almost injures herself by tripping.

She snatches the phone up from the older woman and presses it so hard to her ear that it hurts.

“Hey sweetheart,” his voice is like music to her ears and she visibly relaxes. He sounds so very tired, but sober, and it warms her heart.

“You called,” Katniss whispers after a moment. He chuckles on the other end of the line as though she was stupid to think he wouldn’t call. She has been waiting three weeks, however, and that gives her some room to doubt his last words to her.

_I won’t be far behind._

He is silent for a long time before she hears the familiar sound of ice shifting in a glass confinement. “I won’t be back quite yet. There are a few more things that need my attention here.”

Katniss grips the phone so hard there is a possibility of it shattering, but it does and she just squeezes tighter. _He isn’t coming_ is all that she can think and it makes her head hurt. She doesn’t realize that she isn’t breathing until his sharp voice calling her name snaps her out of it.

She exhales, and he inhales.

“Give me a month, alright?”

She doesn’t want to give him anything, but she does anyways. “One month.”

They hang up without any goodbyes.

\-----

He calls once or twice a week from then on and it is the only phone call she takes.

Katniss goes back to trying to live her life as before.  She hunts and she sleeps and sometimes she even walks around to see how the rebuilding of The Seam is coming along, but never does she stay for too long.

The month is coming to a close when she gets another phone call and she knows he isn’t coming. He doesn’t even get the apology out before she hangs up on him.

He calls repeatedly for the next three days and finally she picks up late into the afternoon right before she is about to go to bed. She is angry and he knows just what to say to feed her anger, and yet he dispatches it with two words.

“Soon, sweetheart,” and the name that usually sounds like an accusation comes out as an endearment for once.

She hangs up before he can.

\-----

And one day she turns and she isn’t alone.

He is watching her through the hair that obscures part of his face from the doorway of her room. Katniss rolls over in her bed and stares right back.

Greasy Sae had told him that she wasn’t a pretty sight, but he could not disagree more.

Katniss is damaged and too old for her age, but it is those exact scars that make her _so damn beautiful._

She is perhaps the most beautiful Mockingjay of all.

The distance between them disappears and she makes room for him as she’s been trying to do since the day she was reaped for the 74th Hunger Games.

“You’re late.” They shift around in the bed until each is tangled within the other’s limbs. Haymitch is grinning against the top of her head. She can just feel it there and it’s just as annoying as it is soothing.

“Sorry, sweetheart. You know how it is,” his apology is half-assed (like most things he does) but she doesn’t have the energy to care. Instead she kicks him lightly under the covers and he grunts.

She smirks.

“Welcome home.”


End file.
